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Seamstress, Melbourne

Following the trend of transforming Melbourne's heritage buildings into hipster apartments, this former textiles workshop feels like a friend's über-cool warehouse flatalbeit one with a cozy bar in the basement and a top-floor lounge with patterned silks draped from the ceiling. In the first-floor dining room, chef Raymond Larkins fuses Asian and Australian flavors: taro and white fungi cakes with fried spring onions doused in a mint salsa verde; a poussin baked in rock salt with Chinese five-spice date stuffing. Cocktails have similarly exotic ingredients such as lemon oil, pearl dust, and saffron water. The rose petal fritters with saffron and mint cream are a lovely finish (entrées, $18$27).